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Ghosts . . .

In order to smoke at Bob Shade's Hallmark Worldwide Headquarters, one has to walk through the spooky backroom of the facility to go out the back doors. This backroom is where Bob keeps weird things from days gone by, or where he stores projects that need to hang about while glues or finishes dry.

Anyway, today Bob allowed me to take some iPhone pics of the haunted backroom of HWWH. Here we go, folks; please bear in mind that there are technical bits that I may not identify correctly. That's the price you pay.

The first picture shows a couple of unusual guitars. Top one is the acoustic guitar I used to watch Lorrie Collins playing on TV back in the 1950s; Bob is restoring it. It looks a lot better now than when I first saw it a few month ago.



The lower guitar is one that Joe Hall was building and Bob will one day complete. Nifty design. Both haunted, I would say, with cool vibes.

Next, as we wander through the haunted backroom, are bins full of little parts and dot markers and screws and pins and teeny saddle wheels. Bob has tons of these little items and lots of them are from Semie's or Joe Hall's old stock. There are stacks of magnets that Semie used to make pickups, but if you think Bob would let me play with the magnets and teeny metal parts, then you are mistaken. Bob said that these parts are from the mid-1960s. Surely haunted, right?




Last, as we approach the farthest reaches of the backroom near the doors, we see Semie Moseley's ancient belt sander, autographed on the stand by Bill Gruggett. Evidently Semie used this on his earliest builds, and, when the motor burned out and he was starting a new facility with bread from the Ventures, he gave this thing to Mr. Gruggett.



It, too, is, of course, haunted.

So that is a small tour of Bob Shade's haunted backroom. Is it any coincidence that the boy who was the basis for the Exorcist book and movies grew up just a couple of miles south of HWWH?

I think not.

--Jim

Very cool pictures Jim! I would love to see the little bits and parts photographs separately, with detailed measurements, etc. so that I can reproduce them. Oh, never mind. I am just going to have to get my own tour of the haunted castle!

I'd like to have that belt sander. According to my buddy Phil Hernandez, when Bill Gruggett replaced the fretboard on his Gruggett Stratocaster, he sanded it off the neck with a belt sander quite like this one. I have seen Gruggett's.

Hey, Danny--

>>I'd like to have that belt sander . . .

Bob has many weird machines that I cannot fathom the purpose of. Some seem store-bought, and some, like the pickup winders, look like contraptions created from machines with other original purposes.

One day I was looking at some pickups he was making; there were a few rows of them in various stages of completion, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how the heck those things work.

Today I saw what looked like a heavy metal cookie tray of some sort that Bob had been cutting various shapes out of to make some replacement part for a guitar. I was just standing there, smoking a cigarette, wondering how inventive these guitar builders are to take something made for a totally different purpose and imagine it as becoming something else.

Bob has told me stories about how Semie and the other Bakersfield builders would make use of oddball items to make the various little components. Other things, like the bridge decks (I think that's what Bob called them) were stamped out of metal sheets. Bob said, "Now here is one of Semie's 1960s bridge decks and here is one of Joe Hall's. See how this one has a scalloped edge and this one doesn't? They are different in several ways though they do the same thing."

Crazy! I just enjoy hanging out and trying to absorb what Bob is talking about and showing me as we listen to the Everly Brothers or whatever on his shop stereo. That is fun!

--Jim

Bob, dont ever get rid of that Gruggett autographed belt sander without giving me first option! Please!!
Kathy (Gruggett)